Location, sound equipment, and environment are all factors that can greatly impact sound quality. Whether talking on a mobile phone, or in a high-end conference room, these conversations must be clear in order to ensure the best exchange between multiple parties.

Yes, we certainly all know how irritating poor sound quality can be when communicating important information, particularly in a business setting. Just think of how much more productive you feel when walking out of a meeting where you understood every word of the conversations that took place. Now, contrast that to walking out of a meeting that was riddled with sound issues because the microphone didn’t work or the video-conferencing equipment was sub-par. It doesn’t take much to imagine how frustrating it can be when you must repeat what you’ve said over and over again because what you’re saying can’t be understood clearly.

When communicating through a cell phone, we can’t control the surrounding environment which may be constantly changing. Many of us just accept dropped calls and poor cell phone sound quality as a tradeoff for the convenience of walking and talking with our mobile devices. Unfortunately, this often means putting up with a good deal of extraneous chatter and other unwanted noises. However, regardless of the convenience, we can all agree that this is not the ideal way to handle conversations when important work matters need discussing.

For meetings and conversations that require a more professional approach, such as those held in boardrooms, conference rooms or other venues, careful planning and collaboration is key. Understanding the room’s dynamic and getting designers, system builders and integrators on the same page can ensure that all the relevant factors are addressed proactively and the most appropriate equipment is selected for the space, This will enable the reproduction of the source sound with the best quality possible while offering outstanding speech intelligibility.

At Clockaudio, we believe that what you say, is important to say clearly. Sound quality is one of the keys to having a successful meeting outcome and we encourage you to challenge your team to ensure that your meeting room audio always sounds “Clearly Different” in the right way.

Related Posts

In this month’s blog, we would like to talk about how sound quality can impact meeting outcomes. Sound far-fetched? Not really. Read on.

Video and audio conference calls are supposed to be streamlined, productive, and pleasant. When the technology goes as planned, participants can easily work towards solutions and communicate new ideas effectively and virtually...effortlessly.

However, when the sound quality in the room or the video and audio technologies are NOT working properly, meetings can run long, communication can be difficult and stress can rise. We've all been there...you know, the room where the most common remark you hear over the course of the call is “you sound so far away”, “your coming in and out", and “we can hardly hear you”.

When participants have difficulty hearing and understanding each other, any one of these comments can attest to the level of frustration that is unfortunately now dominating the meeting.

There are many factors that need to be considered before choosing the right equipment for a meeting room. Microphones play a significant part of a quality sound system, but the room acoustics will greatly impact the results as well.

Attenuating noise and echo through sound processing is somewhat possible, but ideally, the “room effects” should be addressed prior to installing any equipment. For example, if there is noise or too much reverberation in the room, the microphones will pick it up and reproduce it in ‘Hi-Fi’. As we all know, a ‘clean’ signal will be easier to process, so first things first, address any noise issues up front.

Even though today’s DSP manufacturers ship their products with default settings that can accommodate most rooms, every room is different and each installation will require some EQ tweaking in order to achieve the best sound quality. Most of the time, equipment is installed and the effects are dealt with only when they are heard through the new system. Can you imagine from the end-user's perspective how disappointing and frustrating it is to find out after the fact that they need to invest more money into a meeting room in order to make it ‘sound’ better after it has been commissioned? And what will they think of the integration team that sold them on the project in the first place?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So, performing an acoustic evaluation of the room is the best idea whenever possible. Identify any sound issues, recommend the best equipment for the space and educate the end-user. Only when they are truly informed will they be able to make the most intelligent decision about product value, performance and price.

Just think, in a room with poor sound quality, the word 'billion' could easily sound like the word 'million' to participants on the receiving end. Point being, poor sound quality could literally cost you millions...you get the point.

The importance of planning what equipment to use, and how to use it, is critical to the project’s ultimate success. In every meeting room design, the goal is to make sure everyone can be heard clearly and respond accordingly, and that will always make your meetings “clearly different”.

More often than not, when considering the proper microphone to be used for an installation, the focus is on the sound quality of the microphone. This month, however, we want you to also consider how the microphone might be used, or misused, so that you can also see the importance of focusing on the construction quality of the microphone.

For one reason or another, either by accident or on purpose, some people can’t help themselves and knowingly, or unwittingly, end up damaging or destroying microphones. Here are just a few examples of what we've seen or heard happened.

In one case we’ve seen, a manufacturer’s field technician literally walked across the
client’s boardroom table to perform maintenance on a projector. While he might have
thought he was doing a good job, he accidentally stepped on (and flattened) the grill of a
through table boundary microphone. Ouch!

Then there’s the case of the misused and abused microphones. We had a call from a
teacher a few years back who said he was missing all of the grills from his
classroom's through table boundary microphones. After some investigation, it turned out
that the students were getting creative and making filters out of the grills, and using them
as part of, let’s just say, an inventive smoking apparatus for select legal/illegal herbs…

Then there’s the story of the misplaced pen. Here, people decided to convert the grills of
a through table boundary microphone into their own "inkwells". Yes, people actually took a
pen and stabbed it into the grill of the microphone and made it a very expensive pen
holder. On the brightside, we took this information (and since necessity is the mother of
invention), we created a new model, the C012E-RF, or better knows to our internal teams
as the “Assault Version” of our through table boundary microphone. This mic was built to
be vandal proof. Even the microphone capsule is strategically placed, making it
inaccessible if someone tries to destroy it.

Perhaps one of our favorite stories that talks about the robust manufacturing of our
mics, was about the time we provided microphones for the Iowa Primate Learning
Sanctuary (click here for that case study).

At the Learning Sanctuary we were challenged to build a microphone that the primates
would not or could not easily find in their environment and that would be difficult to
dismantle or destroy. This project was truly monkey business, but Clockaudio’s omnicondenser microphone, a water-resistant product that was chosen for the project held up
well. In fact, our C007-WR microphones were made of Delrin, a very sturdy plastic, so the
build quality was excellent for the habitat’s purposes. In addition, because this product
was originally designed for surveillance and recording in sensitive areas, it had an
extremely low profile, keeping them out of the monkey’s curious eye.

These are just a few of the many stories we’ve heard over the years. We hope that it helps
you to see the value in understanding the “climate” you are working in and the “inhabitants”
that will be interfacing with your equipment.

In understanding both of these variables, you will be able to better identify and choose the
right microphone for any given application. Since vandalism of your equipment can occur
almost anywhere, even in the most prestigious companies, classrooms, courtrooms and
habitats, it is wise to make the investment into better built microphones.

As for Clockaudio, you will not find sturdier, more rugged microphones than ours. So, if
you’re thinking of saving money by installing less-quality microphones with the idea that
your visitors, students or boardroom users are angels, think again! We suggest you go for
the more durable, robust Clockaudio option and save money in the long-run! Your results
will most definitely be...Clearly Different!

Installing a conferencing microphone system isn’t what it used to be because offices have changed. Learn what millennials expect from a conferencing mic.

Cubicles are coming down, working lunches over laptops are the norm, and jeans are acceptable Monday through Friday – and that’s when we even bother putting on pants and coming in to the office at all.

It’s not your father’s office anymore.

Even offices that don’t have cubicle-free open floor plans are shifting their cultures to be more collaborative, and a new generation of specifiers are designing spaces and meeting rooms with moveable furniture and integrated AV equipment for maximum configurability.

However, many times this focus on collaboration is coming at the expense of quality audio and negatively impacting the ability to record and distribute high-end audio.

Losing touch of what makes a quality conferencing microphone system

“Everybody wants their space to look like Google, [and that means] that they’re losing touch with the requirements for a quality conferencing mic in the workplace,” says Christopher Maione, principal of Northport, New York-based Christopher Maione Associates.

“Whether it be an open conference room or an enclosed conference room, the next generation of AV and IT decision makers are not seeing the need or the importance of what I would call a real conferencing microphone system versus a junk mic they can get on Amazon.”

Maione suggests that this could be a contributing factor to part of a seemingly larger devaluation of quality audio technology among younger IT professionals in the AV industry.

“The basic goal of any conference or meeting is to collaborate, and share, and discuss information,” says Mike Solomon, co-founder of Cardone, Solomon & Associates, Inc.

“It’s really important that people are heard and clearly understood, whether they’re sitting in a room
together, or whether people are, for example, in multiple locations, New York, Chicago, London,
Zurich, San Francisco, and another room in Tokyo, in a multi-time zone, global, collaborative video
conference.”

The future of conferencing mics is tied to AV furniture

Paradoxically, the loss of high-quality audio in these collaborative spaces can undermine the very
collaboration it is meant to enhance, especially since so many of these meetings are dialing in
remote employees and partners.

The problem here is that when the heavy oak conference tables got tossed to the wayside, so too did
the built-in microphones.

“First of all, it is very important to understand that the best conferencing mic position in any
application is as close as possible to the source”, says Robert Moreau, Managing Director of
Clockaudio.

“Yet, today’s meeting rooms often trade the conference table with multiple mic points, or the
traditional dais with a built-in mic, in favor of moveable furniture that typically is not mounted with
microphones.

“However, the further the microphone is from the source, you end up picking up more room sound
and less direct sound. This creates a real challenge when trying to communicate effectively,” Moreau
says.

But conferencing mic placement is not the only challenge for a great conferencing microphone
system, because beyond just the logistics, there seems to be a general lack of appreciation for the
utility of high-quality audio among some AV / IT professionals.

Generational differences… They do play a role

When asked why there might be a disparate valuation regarding audio quality between the
generations, Maione adds his insight.

“As baby boomers, many of us have lived in a world before video conference even existed. We used
to do things only by audio conference. Along the way, we learned that 80 percent or better of the
communication comes from audio, and in many instances, 100 percent because we never had
video.”

Maione adds, “Now that we do have video, I don’t think the
majority of millennials realize how important the audio portion is
simply because now they have both (audio and video). I imagine if
we took away the video, they’d realize just why older generations
feel the audio quality is so critical in the design process and to the
overall “experience”, something that Millennials do seem to be
very focused on.”

Outside of the professional realm, Moreau says that it’s the
personal experiences of the different generations that also leads
to different expectations for audio quality.

“Gen X-ers, and especially Baby Boomers, value audio in a major way because we were raised in a Hi-
Fidelity era,” says Moreau.

“This was the craze at the time and the evolution of audio was pretty amazing. We saw recordings go
from mono to stereo, from vinyl to CD, with amplifiers, speakers and everything else getting better
and better sonically.

Essentially, for Baby Boomers and many Gen X-ers, a great conferencing microphone system at the
time was similar to today’s iPod, iPhone, iPad, app craze.”

In some ways, the evolution of office culture mirrors the evolution of audio – as portability has
improved and audio has merged with video, sound quality has “devolved”.

“Today, younger generations in the AV work force are listening to poor quality iTunes, compressed
audio over earbuds, and they have a completely different understanding of what good audio is,”
Maione says.

Targeting Millennials better

Providing some insight into the Millennial mind, Wes Lambert, project engineer at Manhattan-based
Spectra Audio Design Group shares, “As Millennials, we don’t necessarily think of audio and video as
being two separate things.”

“We have cellphones right now you could take out of your pocket and you could use to FaceTime
with someone. You don’t think of it as being two different technologies necessarily. You just look at it
as being one product that just works, and you can communicate with somebody.”

While acknowledging that there may be challenges with convincing Millennials about the importance
of sound quality, Maione says it’s important to acknowledge that this up and coming generation has
helped direct a new world of wireless connections with better integration and more user-friendly
interfaces – or no interfaces at all.

All of which he feels is a byproduct of new users, innovators and products.

“I think what we’ve learned from the next generation is that we need to cut the cord,” Maione says.
“We used to plug in a LAN cable because we needed internet connection, and now, nobody plugs in a
LAN cable. Everything is wireless.”

“I think that the fact [Millennials] like to streamline and make things easier forces us to revisit how
we do things, and to improve on the methods we have used in the past, which I think is great,” says
Moreau. “This is all part of moving forward.”

Lambert, himself a Millennial, agrees there’s often a lack of importance placed on a conferencing
microphone system in new spaces, but he doesn’t think it’s a generational divide.

“I think, in general, people just look at a microphone as being a microphone, you know, ‘How fancy
could it be? I’m just going to spend the least amount possible.

“You know, we don’t even want to look at this thing, so why do I need to spend a bunch of money on
it,’ is kind of maybe what people think.

“Then when they start using the product, and they realize, ‘Oh, okay, I see there’s definitely
downfalls to not spending enough on a conferencing mic – like the breakdown of clear communication. It’s then that we start to see the importance and understand why it makes sense to
invest more money in a better conferencing mic.”

“This situation puts enormous challenges on conferencing mic designers and manufacturers to create
microphones that operate in a variety of acoustic spaces, not just the traditional four walled
conference room with an 8 to 12-foot ceiling, but in a lot of more open spaces,” says Solomon.

Moreau says that his technical engineers have seen a huge trend and movement toward huddle
spaces, which has created a need for a conferencing microphone system that provides flexibility and
that can meet a variety of needs. He suggests that the solution may come, at least in part, from
above.

“Hanging microphones are a very good compromise that enables designers to take the microphones
off the table but still keeping them closer to the source,” Moreau says.

“As far as conferencing mic positioning is concerned it is important to make sure they are deployed
at equal distances from the participants. This way they will all have about the same ratio of direct
and room sound.” And this is a ratio that improves communication dramatically.

Solomon expects a new wave of smart, directional microphones on the market soon that will help
solve a lot of the current problems. And, thanks to the relentless push of our Millennial friends
towards seamless interfaces and better overall user-experiences, the future is looking, well,
futuristic.

“I mean, if you look at some of the old Star Trek films, and some of the technology that was being
portrayed by the creators of that series, I think we’re moving more and more in that direction, I
really do,” Solomon says.

Indeed, if we embrace a future where technology, integration and ease of use is paramount to both
manufacturers that design products and the professionals that specify and integrate them, we will
find a middle ground for audio quality that supports better communication and collaboration.

Today companies are fully embracing collaborative environments and the products and technologies that we provide to them must meet the ever-changing needs of these spaces. Sure, having a quality microphone, great sound quality and the proper placement of those mics is critical to ensuring that the message you are sharing in any collaborative space is crystal clear. Particularly in video-conference applications, making sure you pay attention to how sound is captured and heard is paramount to enabling participants to “get the job done.”

This month we turn the tables and instead of talking about the products that help you collaborate, we’ll share some tips on how to build a collaborative environment when it comes to the PEOPLE in your company.

When you bring people together to collaborate, you expect them to produce results. But what if their performance is hindered by the lack of or use of sub-par technology.

For a collaborative team environment to truly work, you need products and equipment that can stand up to the test of multiple users in a non-traditional set up.

Proper microphone design and sound quality are two components that go a long way to ensure the success of any collaborative space such as a huddle or conference room. Here are some other tips for ensuring the success of your next collaborative meeting:

- Have a Common Purpose and Goal -
Without a goal, there is no team, so make sure everyone on the team knows what the “mission” is, and why the team is necessary to exist. Make sure that each member of the team has voiced their commitment to the group and make sure to keep your sights set on your common purpose when prioritizing the tasks and objectives for the group.

- Trust Each Other -
If you don’t have trust, the chances for great collaboration are sketchy at best. To build trust, make sure that you are honest with each other, that you address conflict in a positive and swift way, that you have a zero-tolerance for gossip and back stabbing, and set an example by showing that YOU trust the team members.

- Know Your Role -
Be crystal clear when you identify the expectations for each person in the group, make sure everyone knows what their unique and shared responsibilities are, understand what each team member is contributing and revisit the roles within the group often in case anything needs adjusting.

- Crystal Clear Communication -
Keep the flow of information consistent and be specific. Most problems arise from misunderstandings and miscommunications which can breakdown your collaborative unit. Over communicate if you need to without being condescending and practice empathy to make sure you understand the position of others in the group. If you have a misunderstanding, work quickly to resolve it and make sure to celebrate your victories and acknowledge your fellow team members.

- Differences are a Good Thing -
When working in a team you want to have members that have a difference of opinion and that represents all different perspectives. Try to learn as much as you can from another member and consider any ideas based on its merits not on how similar it is to what you were thinking.

- Remember What Brought You to the “Dance” -
Groups can sometimes take on a life of their own, so remember what brought you to the dance. To stay on track, make sure you filter all that you are doing by comparing it to what your original objectives and goals were. You will want to evaluate the effectiveness of how you are conducting the meetings and adjust it when it needs to be. Put someone in charge of the “health” of the group’s dynamic while you all strive to meet your collaborative goals.

These tips will help you build a strong, collaborative team that will help you conquer any business goal you set.

This month, we explore some of the products that meet the communication needs of today’s businesses. This was originally part of an interview that our own Simon LeDuc did with Commercial Integrator and has been repurposed to share with you in this month’s blog.

How are products like the C002E-RF and the C009E-RF omni directional microphones helping modern office spaces meet their communication needs?

The C002E-RF and C009E-RF are great solutions for the huddle rooms and small meeting tables, especially when used in combination with a third-party phantom powered XLR to USB preamp adaptor to connect to a soft codec. Because it’s an omni-directional microphone, when you use it in a small huddle room or collaborative room, it is more than enough to cover a 4 feet wide table. It’s a simple tabletop solution that can be easily installed without leaving a mark on the table. These are two solutions out of many that Clockaudio offers for today and tomorrow’s conference room, whether big or small.

Are there ways to explain to customers the value of a quality collaboration system without getting too technical? How can you get people to start thinking about collaboration systems as a good idea, and not only just to save money over traveling from office to office?

Sure, you can ask questions such as:
Have you noticed how much longer you can focus on a meeting when it’s quiet around you?

Can you recall a conference call, where you had a hard time understanding the person on the other end of the line?

After the call, did you realize that most of your brainpower during the call was used trying to understand the person’s message because the sound quality was not good?

Like an audio engineer doing forensic work on a Police TV show, your brain needs to filter out the noise and reconstruct the conversation using pattern recognition, all while maintaining a constructive dialog with the participants in the meeting you are in.

A noisy line, noisy HVAC, reverberant room or bad microphone can interfere with a person’s message. This is called hearing fatigue, and this is where intelligibility (or lack thereof) can play an important role between having a successful meeting and having a frustrating one.

Now by changing the HVAC to a more silent unit, by tweaking the acoustics of the room, by changing to a better conference system or by upgrading to a better microphone you can greatly improve the sound quality in your room and provide better intelligibility for participants. This is where a good conferencing setup can make all the difference in the world, and this all starts with choosing the right microphone for the job.

Are there certain rules of thumb that integrators can follow when choosing boundary microphones, suspended microphones and tabletop microphones to best meet the communication needs of businesses?

First: There are no “bad types” of microphones; every microphone has a specialty it is good at.

Note: If you go with 3 or more people per cardioid capsule, the person in front of the microphone will be much louder than everybody else, creating issues with your gain structure.

For Omni directional boundary microphones = Put on a table not larger than 4 feet (depending on the acoustics of the room).

You can cover 3 participants per side of a table (not larger than 4 feet) per microphone.

Never mix cardioid and omni microphones as their differences in polar pattern will create audio issues when mixed together.

Remember, omni microphones will capture more room noise than cardioid so keep your microphones close to your participants.

For our triple element suspended C303-RF & C303D-P microphones

-at 7.5ft from the ground, you can cover a 15ft circle or 10ft square (I find it easier to look at it as a 10ft square when overlapping many C303 in a room).

Are digital technologies, including formats like Dante making the specification and installation of collaboration systems easier?

Of course! It helps cut down on installation and project costs. We calculate a savings of around 35% by leveraging Dante in your video conferencing project.

It also makes it much easier to transport audio and logic over long distances using our CDT100 Dante transporter box.

Our CDT100 Dante Transporter can even let you customize the RGB LED of your Clockaudio touch buttons with up to 16 million color combinations. Even if the norm is red and green for mute & unmuted, using red and blue instead would make your installation ‘’ADA accessible’’ for people with color blindness. The LEDs, buttons and motorized control can all travel through network with the Dante audio using a single Cat5 cable! This is how easy it has become.

How does Clock Audio foresee the collaboration market evolving over the next few years?

I think we’ll continue to see a big rise of the soft codecs (Zoom, Skype for business).
Conference rooms and huddle rooms will be more and more BYOD (bring your own devices) spaces with Dante and USB.

Just a few decades ago, organizing a meeting meant you had to try and schedule all participants to be present in the same room at the same time. A task that was often easier said than done. For a national or global company and people in various locations around the world, meetings used to require travel and time spent out of the office, adding significant costs.

Fortunately, technology has since evolved, creating new ways to set up and participate in meetings. Enter the world of Audio/Video Conferencing, which has become the standard medium for exchanging thoughts and ideas in today’s fast-paced world.

Following the creation of Audio/Video Conferencing came the birth of webinars and on-line classes, and distance learning class sessions via webcams installed in schools, universities, hospitals and other institutions. The need and demand for sharing knowledge instantly with the rest of the world beckoned, and technology answered and changed the way we conduct meetings.

With a plethora of communication devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets, communication is possible virtually anywhere. Now, wherever you go and wherever you are, you can instantaneously join a meeting regardless of its time and location. This approach to meetings has led an industry and our workplaces to embrace a new kind of meeting room – the Huddle Room.

Extremely user friendly, the Huddle Room has become a widely-used platform for less formal and more impromptu meetings. Providing a space to “jump in” and brainstorm ideas, or solve small issues and business challenges, the room is always “at the ready” so that you can conference at a moment’s notice.

Today’s ‘ready-to-use’ Huddle Rooms are at our fingertips. The host sends a simple email invitation to all participants, reserves the room and participants meet to ‘huddle up’ and discuss what they need to. The field of play is a room that typically hosts three, four or six participants. The meetings are brief and designed to get everyone on the same page or “back in the game” and working on tasks and initiatives once the huddle (meeting) breaks.

There are several benefits that go far beyond the reduced cost of construction for Huddle Rooms. Fostering culture change is one such benefit and that contributes to more effective communication and greater teamwork and collaboration. This in turn can increase productivity and efficiency while providing the right atmosphere for creative problem solving. The new smaller and more intimate design of these spaces allow larger spaces, like boardrooms and main conference rooms, to be left available for their own appropriate uses.

For huddle rooms and the results that meetings in these spaces can deliver, their smaller size is not an issue. In fact, they can be as effective, or more effective, as larger boardrooms but at a fraction of the square footage, furniture and design cost.

With the increasing quality of audio and video technologies, either with soft codecs or more sophisticated equipment, these rooms are often a much less-expensive solution and are rapidly becoming the standard. It is common for companies to incorporate multiple Huddle Rooms to foster an on-going sense of collaboration and to make spaces accessible and available to everyone on staff.

Now people can simply make a phone call, send an instant message or email to the parties involved just minutes before walking into a huddle room, and instantly connect to share documents and ideas. Participants can see each other in real-time, as if they were in the same room, with the added benefit of visual cues that are not available on a traditional conference call.

However, as cost effective as huddle rooms can be, sound quality and intelligibility are areas that should never be value engineered. Whether using an omni-directional microphone, such as the CRM200S-RF, the C002E-RF or the C009E-RF for smaller spaces, or a multiple cardioid-element mic for larger, less-quiet spaces, Clockaudio provides a variety of solutions for Huddle Rooms that are reliable, flexible and that provide great sound quality so that your meeting’s message is heard loud and clear.

One multi-element microphone that will perform remarkably well in a huddle room is Clockaudio’s suspended C303-RF. It has three elements that cover a full 360°, using three cardioid polar patterns with an acceptance angle of 120 degrees each.

A boundary-table microphone would also be a great addition in a huddle room and would ensure superb intelligibility. The CS3(S)-RF is another perfect solution as it can cover three quarters of the conference table with three half-cardioid patterns.

Industry analysts estimate that for every group-video room, there are 20 – 25 huddle rooms. With approximately 1.5 - 2 million group-video rooms worldwide, the number of huddle rooms is projected to be 30-50 million. *1 The growth for these rooms may be rooted in our up-and-coming majority business-stake holder – the Millennial. Collaboration-minded and with a desire for peer-to-peer feedback, Huddle Rooms provide the high-tech experience and team-based environment Millennials value. With this group expected to dominate the workforce by 2025 (75%)*2 , there is no doubt the Huddle Room will be here for the long-foreseen future.

For Clockaudio and for our industry, that translates to a tremendous opportunity to create rooms that support this changing workforce and that have the technology and sound quality that will deliver improved and Clearly Different results for years and years to come.

When Schaeffler Automotive Aftermarket, a division of German manufacturing giant Schaeffler, upgraded its Langen, Germany headquarters it was under a strong directive. Guided by Michael Söding, Head of Automotive ... read more